23 Love Affair Ends With An Airplane Goodbye
Chapter 23, Airport Goodbye Is Hard to Say But When It's Over, It's Over
Edward filled what I thought was missing in life but our physical time together was limited. With his internship and studies, he was more time stressed than me. I never his infatuation. How could he be in love with me? I wasn’t his peer. He didn’t fit my Tropicana Village upbringing, dysfunctional family and swing shift world. He was to be a doctor. I, well wafer fab aligner said it all. Additionally, I was married and the mother of kids. Even if single, without children, he would eventually be claimed by his own and leave me, abandoned.
I accepted a long-term relationship was impossible, kept him in the present tense and didn't dwell on the preordained end. Our relationship was a temporary veer into a cul-de-sac, the entry sign, “No Outlet”. Edward's life highway was his career and a future family, without me.
He once attempted to introduce me to his world but it backfired. He took me to a formal medical award occasion at Stanford and bought me a black gown and a real pearl necklace to attend it as his “arm candy.” I ended up as ill at ease as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman at the Polo Turf Club. Those at the soiree were academics and doctors. Edward spent his time talking to them. I was on my own after a few introductions. Maladroit, I kept my mouth shut, nodded agreement to what was said and smiled. I talked about the table floral arrangements to have a conversation without sounding stupid when cornered yet knew I appeared such doing so.
A few women commented how lovely I looked. I knew they were fishing to know who this uneducated, Asian girl, wearing a wedding ring was and how she had enchanted Edward. I didn’t relax until we left. Asked if I had a good time, I said it was lovely, which it was, but not for me. I never attended one of his formal functions again with excuses I couldn’t get away.
Edward’s cul-de-sac time was 3 or 4 Friday nights a month from 6:30 PM to 5:30 AM, less than 12 hours. I stopped by his apartment for "nooners", typically twice a week, on the “T”’s, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours. Total physical time together was only 4 to 15 hours a week. His image did often drift into my mind, most often while working as I aligned silicon wafers on the microscope. As I peered down his image would smile up and I would carry on imaginary conversations in which I was as sophisticated and acerbic in wit as he was.
While he frequently crept into my mind, I tried to concentrate on family when with them, my life’s path. I kept telling myself I not to drift off and crash into a walnut tree on the side of my highway. Most of my time outside work remained with family. During the week my swing shift schedule, leave house at 5:30 PM, return at 2:30 AM, sleep until 6:30, get hubby and kids off, clean house, greet kids, prepare family dinner, meet hubby and start the next shift meant most of my time not at work was centered on family. Weekends flew by as a blur of backed up domestic chores, an outing with the kids, Sunday BBQ with his and my family, ensuring hubby was milked and catch up sleep.
While Edward stamped me as his with attire, jewelry, perfume, cosmetics, nail polish and sex games it never entered my mind to leave my husband. My wedding ring was my statement. I was married, a mother of 2 kids. I always kept this emblem on, my declaration of my true status. It vexed Edward but there was a betrayal line I couldn’t cross. I’d never leave my husband even if Edward asked me to marry him despite our differences and my having kids. That’s what I told myself. The reality was he never hinted, inferred or asked me to marry him.
After 2 years cracks began to occur in the relationship. I read novels I selected not him. His disinterest in them if I talked about them irked me. Tom Jones was too much like Country Western music for my taste. The sex games became history. His fastidious attention to my attire became boring. While we didn’t argue the periods of silence when together lengthened.
I knew from the beginning one day he would leave me. One day he did.
I wanted but never expected him to be faithful but for what I knew, he was. There was never evidence of another woman in the almost two years I rushed to his apartment. If there was another I would have left him. I wouldn’t have been able to accept another in his apartment let alone bed, they like he, were mine, even if temporarily.
In the spring of 1977 he accepted a hospital research assignment on the East Coast when his Stanford internship ended. He said I could follow but it was just words. It was his way to say goodbye, goodbye forever. He knew I wasn’t abandoning my family. It was time for him to start his, not an instant one with another's kids.
I asked if he wanted the jewelry back which upset him. I apologized but then he told me to give back the panties he bought, saying he didn’t want another man to see me in them. It was weird but I brought them to him. He put them in plastic bags. I don’t know what he did with them. Maybe he took them with him to remember me by. That’s what I told myself. Going with my husband to buy new ones he selected was my notification, if there was another, he was gone.
Edward had a big going away party at his apartment. I didn’t go. I didn’t want to see it stripped of the things remembered while others trampled our private place. Seeing it without the fish tank, water bed, with empty cupboards and refrigerator, cleaned but abandoned stove where I prepared meals would be too much. I didn’t know nor ask what happened to the fish tank. I was afraid he had given it to a friend.
I told him I’d never seen another in our sanctuary and didn’t want to see it filled with strangers. That is what I said but instead knew I would be socially ill at ease among his peers. I also knew I would break down and cry and attract attention. I didn’t want to be stared at, the uneducated woman he was oddly fixated about. He too was relieved I opted out, a sign he was returning to his own.
Instead I saw him off at the San Francisco Airport, arranged so we were alone when I picked him up outside his apartment. He carried only 2 bags. Everything else was packed and shipped, including his Porsche. Unlike before we said little as I drove, parked the car, we walked to the ticket counter, he checked his baggage and we proceeded to the gate, holding hands.
There were no security checks then; one went to the gate to see a passenger off. I had a jeweler make a gold necklace with a little fish, a guppy I told him even if it didn’t look like one. I gave it to him as we sat and waited at the gate, an hour early. He surprised me and gave me a little gold frog. We fondled our gifts in silence waiting for the time of call. There was nothing to say. It was over. We were facing the opposite arms of a Y, each new step further apart.
We at first held hands then sat with them in our laps holding our gifts as the rest of the passengers boarded with each rows call. At the last call, the final call, it was time; we stood up, kissed, I wiped tears from my eyes; he picked up his carryon bag, went to the gate, turned in front of the agent and told me to remember him as he would me. The agent took his ticket, once past the door he turned again, blew a kiss and was shooed into the aluminum tube which took him away forever. The door closed, was sealed shut and he was out of my life. He met me a 25-25-old girl in a shoe store and left me a 27-year old woman, alone at the airport.
I cried as I waited for the plane to back up. I cried as I saw it taxi on the runway. I cried as it zoomed to gain speed, arched up into the sky and disappeared. I cried on the drive home.
He called when settled in. We kept a short period of telephone communication. He was still time stressed in his new position which I told myself explained his curt and aloof conversations. Once engaged in his career, however, it was not long before he met and married, an Asian woman, a Philippine nurse. He told me about meeting her but soon called no more. It was over, over. I knew I was past tense as I stared at my fish tank and thought of him, my prince guppy gone from my life. Not long after he married the little frog in my fish tank disappeared. I searched everywhere but never found it. I gave the fish tank sans frog but with guppies to a girl at work.
I couldn’t drive near his former apartment, not even near Stanford. I played the song "Don't Leave Me This Way" by Thelma Houston over and over until I could say the lyrics by heart.
Family demands, however, pulled me back to my domestic world. To forget, I worked at being the best wife and mom. Still, once a while, when alone I took my gold frog keepsake from its hiding place and stared at it in my hand. It ensured my memories were real. It comforted me of how fortunate I had been to know him. He was a reality if only in memories. Reassured, I put it back in its hiding place.
I still have the gold frog and am looking at it now.
I’m crying listening to "Don't Leave Me This Way" as I look at my reflection in the mirror with the glow of bee's wax candle light. I feel so alone.
The candle flickers, the frog and music frame my poignant memories. I smell again a redwood, eucalyptus and hibiscus evening's aromas surrounding an apartment complex pool, long gone. I mentally retrace the steps of that first evening which changed me. The door stands before my memory as I cross the threshold again. The night I became a woman I will always remember. Recollecting, however, I wonder if my subsequent affairs were just repeated attempts to cross the threshold again.
I never forgot him, my prince. I followed his career. He became a recognized luminary in cancer research. I hoped he occasionally thought of me and snooped enough to find out he started a family. Once the internet developed I found his email address through the hospital and sent him a note wishing him the best on his birthday. He didn’t reply. I suspected he wouldn't but it still hurt. Chastened, I never emailed again.
I began to wonder if I was only his Asian fetish, his Oriental dress up doll.
Author Notes: Once the affair is over she starts to wonder if she knew Edward. Was his agenda in their relationship what she assumed?
For more features, such as favoriting, recommending, and reviewing, please go to the full version of this story.